Neurotic Life: Part III

After three years in Nashville we were so desperate we were thinking of going back to Winnipeg, Manitoba. If that failed we could always move to Moldova and reclaim the land the Cossacks stole from my family during the Kishinev pogrom. After debating between Manitoba and Moldova we moved to Miami.

Controlling your behavior is a matter of life and death in Miami. If you want to stay alive here, you have to master your driving behavior. First, you have to control the automatic desire to move ahead when traffic lights turn green. Second, you have to count four cars that will cross in red in front of you. Third, if you don’t want to be rear ended, you have to accelerate when the light turns yellow. Finally, you have to learn a few choice words in Spanish to communicate with the drivers who get stuck at the intersection.

Miami is indeed a wonderful place to learn how to control your behavior. Here, you have to unlearn everything you learned about driving, unless, of course, you come from Latin America, which is where I grew up. Given my Latin background you would have thought that I’d know how to drive here, but all I remember are some choice words I use in intersections.